Love,
Natasha
PS. Madame Girard want me to apply for this special program they got for kids who go to public school in New York City to go to France over the summer. She said that you could spend like a whole month in Paris over the summer, living with a family and taking classes and going to all these art museums and stuff. She told me she would write me a recommendation because I do good in her class. See Antonio, when you come back to school you gotta make sure you do good in her class so she can write you a recommendation and you can go too. Maybe we can get married before we go and this can be our free honeymoon. Think about it, okay boo?
Love again,
Natasha
April 23, 1990
Dear Natasha,
Baby, you don’t know how good it felt to see you today. Did you notice anything different about me? I been lifting—I got muscles now. Three months in here and I ain’t no bird chest no more. MGD and Mookie was riding me the other day at lunch, talking bout You done graduated, son—pre-K to kindergarten. When I get out and we finally get some time alone, I’m gonna put it down like I never did before. Baby, you gonna love my new body. I’m hard as a brick. I think that tomorrow if you sit right behind me we could be close enough to hold hands under the railing, behind my chair. I don’t think the cops will notice if we be real low-key about it. I think that things is going real good for me with this thing. It seem like all the witnesses they have are doing a good job of really convincing the judge that I’m not a bad kid. I think I can feel real good about my lawyer. He’s a cool dude, he’s on my side. I guess I had watched too many movies where the court-appointed attorney wasn’t shit, but he different with his nerdy ass. He always make sure that I get something real good to eat when I’m not behind bars, cause he know what I’m going through in there. The other day, he brought me some funny-smelling tie food or something like that, some of that Chinese shit. It was good though, a bunch of noodles in some peanut sauce. I never knew you could make sauce with peanuts, but I’m learning a lot of shit I never knew these days.
We got some psychiatrist test back today that they had did on me, and he said some corny shit like, By George Antonio you’re a genius. And I told him to quit messing with me and he was like, No, according to these tests, you’re in the mid to upper echelon or some shit of human intelligence. I was like get the fuck out of here, and he said he was serious. Then I told him, That’s good shit. And he was like, Actually it isn’t. He said he wasn’t trying to get me down, but his job would be a lot easier if I was retarded. I thought that was some funny shit and we laughed, but I would rather go to jail than for people to think I’m a retard. Now, I never thought of myself as no genius. I wonder what my homeboys would think about that. I know none of my teachers would say that shit. I didn’t do homework, ain’t never made the honor roll in my life. I guess when I get out of here and change my ways, I’m gonna get on that motherfucker for real. Maybe I should forget about music and balling, and think about being a scientist or some shit like that. But back to the trial, I liked that one dude who got up and testified for me, the coroner or whoever who said that the angles of the entry wounds showed that my daddy was probably coming at me when I stabbed him. That bitch prosecutor tried to stare him down and shake him and keep asking him the same questions over and over again but in different ways. Did you catch that baby? I did. Well, he didn’t shake. He stuck to what he said, which was that my daddy had to be coming at me. He wouldn’t break for her. And I couldn’t believe that Mr. Cook came through, that he showed up for me. With one of them tight suits on again. I think that was a big thing for us, cause my lawyer had said when we were eating that tie shit, This was a good day Antonio, a real good day. I think it was too. He told me that between the experts and the character witnesses, I would be straight.
But my family is coming up—my mother and my brother and my partners are getting ready to get up there and start talking about things I don’t want to talk about, things I don’t want nobody to hear. I gotta get up there too, and every day me and my lawyer be practicing what I’m gonna say. He be cursing me out and shouting and getting real mean, but he just doing what he gotta do so I can be prepared for anything that could come up. I think that’s the day I don’t want you to come, when my family start talking. I don’t think I can take you hearing the truth about me.
Sincerely,
Antonio
April 27, 1990
My dearest Antonio,
It’s late at night and I’m sitting out here by myself on the fire escape, looking at 7th Ave, thinking about you and how we used to sit out here and hug and laugh and tickle each other and kiss real hard and long. I miss you so much my whole body hurts. Mommy just went back inside. I can still smell her Avon perfume, it’s stuck in the air all around me, like she’s still out here with me and holding me tight. Drew spent the night tonight. He said Grandma been acting a little cuckoo lately, making him clean greens and chitlins and turn soil and shit and he can’t take it. Mommy tried to tell him that no matter where he went it was gonna be something he didn’t like, and that he couldn’t run away every time he didn’t want to follow rules. So she told him since he made the choice to up and leave and help Grandma and live with her for a while, that he could only stay for the night and then he was gonna have to take his butt back to the Bronx. Roy wasn’t even around, so I don’t think she was trying to please him when she said it. I think she was really right and trying to teach Drew a lesson. I guess she was right. You can’t have it your way all the time.
But he was sleep on the couch snoring and slobbing all over the pillows, and my mother had came out to put a blanket on him cause it’s still a little chilly even though it’s spring. So after she put the blanket on him, she came out to the fire escape to smoke a cigarette. She asked me if the smoke was bothering me, and I told her no. Then she asked me if I had smoked before, and I couldn’t even lie. Hell, me and Laneice was smoking L’s last night. I don’t know what it is, but I always find it hard to lie to my mother. That shit is, like, almost impossible. I just started laughing and kind of whispered, “Yeah …” She didn’t get mad though, she just told me that she wished she had never started and then told me I should stop while I still got a chance. She asked me how I was doing, and I told her I was okay. I started to tell her that I had been skipping school to come to your trial, but I figured I didn’t want to hit her with too much at one time. The smoking was enough for one night. The school can’t call cause our phone disconnected anyway. But she saw my notebook out and me writing, and she said, “Girl, you and them letters.” I thought she was gonna say something smart or crack on me or whatever, but she didn’t. She just kind of looked up at the sky, then down at the street cause it was so quiet and empty. I mean, there wasn’t one car or one person on the block for a few minutes, and you know that never happens around here. Then she just kind of patted my shoulder and told me not to stay up too late. And here I am, staying up late writing to you. But Antonio, I’m going to have to wrap this letter up soon. I gotta do my science and English homework, plus I think I’m gonna go ahead and apply for that thing that Madame Girard want me to apply to. I think that it would be a good learning experience for me, like she said. I never really been out of New York. I been to Albany and Philly to visit some of my relatives, and I been down to VA and North Carolina. But shit, that’s it. Imagine going all the way over the ocean. It’s like 100,000 miles and it takes about eight hours on the plane. I never even been on a plane before. I think it would be amazing to look down and see the tops of all the buildings in Harlem, then New York, then the United States, and then all of a sudden the whole world. Laneice flew one time, to Disney World with her church, and she told me that it looks like the sky done reversed itself. Like, it switched places with the ground. She said that’s what people mean when they say they’re walking on air, because when you look out the window and see the clouds below you, you feel like nothing can touch you. That’s how I want to feel right now, like
nothing in the world can touch me. (Except you.)
Love,
Baby Girl
April 30, 1990
Baby Girl,
I never thought I would ever see my mother as sad as I saw her today. I never ever seen my moms cry before, never, not even when Daddy was kicking her ass or when it wasn’t no food in the house or when I fucked up in school. I bet she ain’t even cry at the funeral, did she? You don’t have to tell me, I know she didn’t. I never knew before today how much my mother really loves me. I asked her a thousand times since that day, Ma, you still love me? Ma, you mad at me? And she always say that she would never stop loving me cause I was her firstborn and I came out of her body first and showed her what it meant to really be a woman, so she said that she would never stop loving me. But she ain’t never answer if she was mad at me, she never answered that question straight. She just say stuff like, I’m sorry for what I put you through, or I should have left, or I wish things would have been better. So I guess she is kind of mad at me, at least a little bit. But after today, I know she still love me. I guess I didn’t want you to know about the things that went on in my house, about that shit that go on behind closed doors that nobody wanna talk about. And I guess I didn’t want you to be mad at me about letting shit go on. I should have been a man. I should have handled shit better.
I could handle it when Black got up there, told them about that night, how we came home and my mother was all beat up and I grabbed a knife out of the sink and me and my daddy got into it and I just tried to get him off my mother but I stabbed him instead, by accident. Maybe. I don’t care if somebody reading this letter because I need to stand up and be a man and admit the truth to myself. I know Trevon was lying for me up there. I think he don’t think it was a accident, and looking back I don’t think it was either. I think I meant to do it. I meant to kill my father, Natasha. It wasn’t an accident. I did it. I guess I’m just gonna have to live with that. I wanted to shut my ears and crawl down on the floor and die when Trevon started talking about how my daddy swelled up, how he got heavy, how him and me and my mother pulled him in the bathroom and left him there while me and my mom was trying to figure out what to do. Trevon helped me remember it, helped me remember how I felt, how my head was swimming and how I couldn’t breathe or think or eat or dream about nothing but the body the body the body coming to get me and swallow me whole. I wanted to get up and go out of the room and cry by myself, like a man, but I know I couldn’t get up and go nowhere. I know they would have wrestled me down on the ground and put their knees in my back and on my neck and made my mother cry even more, so fuck it, I just sat there and let tears come down my face. I tried to stop myself, but I just couldn’t help saying, “I’m sorry Ma.” I know I upset the courtroom, but I couldn’t help myself. Ma was really trying to get those people to believe her, to believe that I was a good son. But I know I wasn’t. I lied, I got in trouble in school, I stayed out all night and had her worrying and shit. I guess I did all that shit cause I didn’t want to be at home. I didn’t want to see my daddy hitting her or drinking or running around with other women. I couldn’t stand seeing Tyler and Trevon cry all the time. I couldn’t stand that shit. I didn’t want to see it. But if I would have known my mother was hurting and upset, I would have done better I really would have. I would have been a better son. I got a whole weekend to think about what I’m gonna say when I get up there, how I’m gonna get these people to believe I’m not a monster.
With love,
A
May 1, 1990
Antonio, we can’t change the past. We can only focus on the future. That’s what Madame Girard and Mr. Cook and Mr. Lombard and my mother and my grandma always say to me when I’m mad about something or feeling like I need to fight. Like when the fire happened and we lost my daddy and all our stuff and we had to go live in that shelter while we waited for an apartment to open up. I was so mad at everybody and all I could think about was killing somebody or setting something on blaze so I could burn up too and go be with my daddy again. That’s why we got put out of the shelter, cause they had found me in the bathroom setting towels on fire. Cause I wanted to burn myself. I really did. I wanted to commit suicide, if you can believe that about me. I never told you I did something like that, but it’s amazing what you can tell somebody in a letter that you can’t tell them face to face. But my mother wasn’t even mad at me because she said that was just my way of expressing myself, and that I would have to find a new way of dealing with things. She said that Daddy wasn’t coming back and we needed to think about the future now, what we were going to do with the hand God dealt us. That’s what I’m telling you and that’s what you need to believe.
Antonio, I don’t love you any different than I did before you got locked up. And no, I don’t think you crazy and I would never think you crazy. You had to do what you had to do, right? You didn’t mean to do it, and I know that if you could change the past you would. You would have done something different. I know you would have. I have no doubt in my mind that you would have made a better choice. So stop calling yourself a monster, okay? You starting to make me worry about you. If you think that’s what you are, then that’s how it’s gonna sound when you get up there to tell your side of the story. And that’s not how you want it to come out. So, you just gotta stay strong and believe in yourself, so you can get up there and do what you gotta do, so you can get out of this situation and we can be together. Just think about that and let that help you whenever you start thinking about what a bad person you are. Stay strong for me, so we can get past this and move on with our lives and go on to do all those things we talked about, okay?
Head up,
Natasha
May 1, 1990
Well baby, my lawyer said I did okay, but I know he just trying to make me feel good. I know I blew it today. I didn’t mean to get mad, but I just couldn’t help it. All that shit that bitch was saying to me, bringing up shit that didn’t have nothing to do with what happened that day. I mean, what the fuck do the fact that I got suspended this year for fighting got to do with what happened on that day between me and my daddy? That ain’t got shit to do with nothing, but when my lawyer object she wanna say some shit about establishing my aggressive personality and propensity for rage and all that other shit. Using all them big words to get it twisted for everybody. Then she gonna have the nerve to ask me why I didn’t call the pigs or why I didn’t tell nobody at school or a counselor or my doctor or whoever about what was going on in my crib. What is that bitch thinking? Oh yeah, while doc sticking a big needle in my butt I’m just gonna be like, “Yeah, Daddy beat my mother ass and mine too last night.” Come on, what the fuck dream world she living in? If she think the police bout to come up in my crib and do something just cause my daddy beating up on us, she a lot stupider than she should be if she went to law school. Maybe they come in Westchester or Long Island or Queens, but they ain’t coming in Harlem. I would have to knock some white lady in the head and then drag her uptown to my crib and let her call the police from there if I wanted them to come and help me. I know I shouldn’t have done it Natasha, but I couldn’t help it. She made me so fucking mad I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to kill her. I really did. I wanted to jump over my seat and grab her by the back of the head and put her in my mother’s face and show her the scars that’s still there and say, Look at this bitch. How would you like this every day bitch? But I knew I couldn’t. I tried to be calm, but I couldn’t help getting mad. I felt my face getting hot and sweat coming on my face and pouring down my face and I just couldn’t help it. I had to get mad. I had to. I tried not to, but I couldn’t help it. I fucked up baby. Please don’t be mad at me.
Love,
Antonio
May 2, 1990
Dear Antonio,
Don’t be mad at yourself. Things happen. I really didn’t think it was that bad. I mean, I could tell you was getting mad and you wanted to bust the bitch in her grill, but you wasn’t that mad. I’ve seen yo
u really mad, like when you all lost that basketball tournament at Riverside Church by like two points, and when your mother told you that you couldn’t be in the band no more cause she couldn’t afford to rent the drums anymore. Now you was mad then, punching the walls and everything. But I think you kept it together up there today. I guess we’ll see. Just between me and you, I don’t think that the other side is doing too good. It seem to me that the lawyer lady who’s against you is not very nice, and I think the jury see that. Remember when me and you had legal studies together and we learned all about the tactics that lawyers is supposed to use in the courtroom? Remember when we talked about them being sensitive to the jury, not alienating them and making themselves sympathetic? Dawg, I can’t believe I remember all that. I probably should think about being a lawyer. Well anyway, I don’t think she doing that right now. Like, when your lawyer gets up and say funny stuff or make little comments some of the jurors might laugh or smile, but they never do that with her. So see, that’s a good sign. I don’t know what I’m gonna do for the rest of the week, until we find out what they say. They gonna let you off, I know it. I can feel it in my heart. They can’t deny the truth. They can’t deny everything your mother said, all the good stuff people said about you, what the experts said about you defending yourself. Mommy said that she gonna come to the courthouse with me when the jury come back. Mrs. Lawrence said she gonna call me as soon as your lawyer call her, and we all gonna go down there together.
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